Another cool, comfortable day? Yesterday stayed cool and overcast most of the day. Gorgeous sunset though. We did get a few drops of water from the sky. IDK if it’s fair to call it ‘rain’… But some stuff got a little bit wet. If it’s cool today, I’ll be happy.
Did my volunteer work in the morning. Spent a couple of extra hours getting stuff done as I learned that they had an actual rehearsal scheduled. Stuff needs to work so that people develop confidence in it. So I put in a little extra effort. Then it was too late to get all my pickups done though, so I did one, and went to the shop to poke at stuff.
Today I’ll be volunteering again. Hopefully we can sit at the board and start listening to the mics instead of just trying to get them working. I can’t stay late as I have a couple of time sensitive and fairly far away pickups to do. Stuff for my shop, my hobby, and presents for my wife. I like to stock the ‘present closet’ early so I’m not struggling last minute to find a gift.
And that should make for a busy and tiring day.
I’m contributing to my community and the future of kids, and I’m stacking. So that’s all good.
nick
Where do you even find lumps of coal these days?
Paul, Monday:
And at least the occasional gem. I remember seeing three DayNotes comments with 14 upvotes. One was your response to my claim to be the god of good parking. “O Asphalta, full of grace, please find me a parking place.”
MrAtoz, Monday:
IIRC, the stated reasons were “for public safety” and “nobody needs it”. Of course. NYS govt is teh sux largely because NYC is teh sux.
My mother was born 8 ¾ months after Pearl Harbor. Coincidence? I suppose it’s possible. My dad* was also born during WWII.
* I distinguish between “my mother and father” who appear on the birth certificate and “my mom and dad” who raised me.
Paper straws: Bigger carbon footprint and six times the carcinogens
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2026/10/28/the-truth-about-plastic-straws-is-revealed-and-i-cant-stop-laughing-n2208706
Suck it, green weinies.
War baby mother. Does Allison Janey in “I, Tonya” give you PTSD like her performance does for me and several of my friends?
I’m sure that your local coal-fired pizza place would oblige, but I traumatized my child putting a lump of coal in her stocking one year.
The coal in that instance came from Tar-jay with the words “Lump of Coal” on a sack included with the product to avoid making a mess.
We won’t even go into what I did to Elf on the Shelf. That has been covered here before, but to those of you who hate that “tradition”, the last time my kids saw the Elf was when I angrily pitched him into a trash can at the curb in front of our Vantucky rental along with his box while they watched from a window.
Everyone, grownups and kids, are way too uptight and fake right now. My Chinese mother-in-law’s superstitious “Aiee” (auntie) affect triggered the Elf on the Shelf abuse.
Yeah, I don’t find the new Panda Express ad campaign all that funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brPUlKrvnUo
Jeez, you guys are up and having conversations way too early.
70F and still dark.
I did get to bed early, and slept. Not uninterrupted by any means, I woke at least 4 times during the night, but was able to go back to sleep. I feel pretty good, alertness-wise. Back hurts, but stretching should help that.
Time to get moving.
n
“Obama mocked Trump’s gold White House as a Cheesecake Factory. The chain just posted a record quarter”
https://finance.yahoo.com/media-advertising/articles/obama-mocked-trump-gold-white-070200714.html
“Former President Barack Obama’s one-liner about President Donald Trump’s gilded White House has turned into a full-blown midterm food fight—and the restaurant chain caught in the middle just posted one of the best quarters in its history.”
“”He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” Obama told a crowd at the Cleveland Public Auditorium on Saturday. In the three days since, Trump, the White House’s official X account, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have fired back; the chain’s longtime designer has weighed in; and the Cheesecake Factory has reported record quarterly revenue.”
Obola can’t even get his criticisms right.
Hmm, most of my stocks in the stock market are down. Not good. My Netflix is down by over 40% ($62 today) since its peak in April ($108).
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NFLX/
The old adage may be true, buy on the dip and sell on the upswing.
JMS has posted aa nice tribute to Walter Koenig. B5 role stuff I hadn’t known.
(I don’t know of a non X or Facebook link right now.)
“Branco Cartoon – Tweaker”
https://comicallyincorrect.com/branco-cartoon-tweaker/
“A.F. Branco Cartoon – El Sayed wants to tweak the Constitution. Change the Right to Bear Arms to the right to Health Care”
Yeah, that is a no-go.
Man, the WD 16 TB external hard drive is so expensive right now. $695 at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KTRKB6S?tag=flandrey-20
Or $619 at Walmart.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/WD-16TB-Elements-Desktop-External-Hard-Drive-WDBWLG0160HBK-NESN/598094913
I have sworn to never buy another Seagate in my life after the last failure but I must admit that I am thinking about it. It has been so long that I do not even remember what the failure was, I think it was a dropped head since I dissected the drive and looked at the ¼ inch furrow in the media. Seagate 16TB Expansion Desktop Hard Drive | MicroB to USB-C (STNP16000400) for $503.
https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-STNP16000400-Generation-High-capacity-compatible-dp-B0G595XRNB/dp/B0G595XRNB?tag=flandrey-20
I really want to replace one of my seven WD 12 TB LAN weekly backup drives.
Linear graph shows the reality of immigrants committing sex crimes, The Economist responds to liberal outrage by changing the graph with a log scale, but people aren’t buying it…
https://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=421938
Be nice to have the real numbers for the U.S., but we know that immigrants, expecially the illegal variety, get their charges reduced by leftist prosecutors and judges.
“Breaking: Evidence Indicates Democrats Intentionally ‘Stacked’ the Ballot in Key Senate Race”
https://www.westernjournal.com/breaking-evidence-indicates-democrats-intentionally-stacked-ballot-key-senate-race/
“Democratic operatives reportedly worked with Alaska Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Mary Peltola to recruit people named Dan Sullivan to “stack the ballot” and confuse voters wanting to vote for incumbent GOP Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, according to a New York Times report.”
“Alaska uses rank-choice voting, which lets the top four vote-getters in the primary advance to the general election. If no candidate receives an outright majority in the general election, voters’ second-choice selections are factored in until someone reaches over 50 percent of the tally.”
As far as I can tell, there is only one dumbrocrat who is not corrupted now, Senator Fetterman.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1668345024863072
I have seen it all now, somebody mounted a Cessna Citation on a truck ??? chassis. And drives it around the place on the freeway.
I am fairly sure that my HOA will not let me put this in my backyard.
https://bids.auctionbymayo.com/auctions/49133-ready-to-move-40-storage-container-auction
And Missouri is a long ways from Texas.
“Valor’s Cost (Children of Valor #4)” by Kal Spriggs
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1723972606?tag=flandrey-20
Book number four of a ten book young adult science fiction series. There is also a two book sequel series and a seven book sequel series, nineteen books in all. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback self published by the author in 2018 that I bought on Amazon in 2026. I now own books #5 and #6 in the series and have ordered #7 and the first books in the sequel series.
Jiden Armstrong is the older child of two archaeologists on the dry, dusty planet named Century, so dry that it does not have any oceans. Jiden is seventeen planet years old which is equivalent to nineteen Earth years and was forced by her parents after her misbehavior to attend and graduate from the five month military prep school that her grandmother runs for the planetary military. She then interned at a logistics and supply company which blew up in her face when she notified the planetary authorities that people in the company were selling stored military spare parts off planet. Now she is attending the Century Military Academy as a fourth year cadet. And the academy has made it mandatory to have computer implants installed in your brain.
The universe of the far off future is amazing. Humans have spread to thousands of star systems, most live on planets but quite a few live on space stations or space ships. As is par for the course, not many get along. And some star systems are expanding and taking other inhabited star systems by force. And there are many aliens on star systems also who are not friendly in the slightest. There is a Star Guard but they have their own objectives and goals and are rarely a help against the constant threats of invasions and pirates.
This is a great story about making mistakes and overcoming difficult situations to make something of yourself. Somebody online recommended this book to me and I really enjoyed the book. If you are a fan of Heinlein juveniles then you will probably love this book also.
The author has a website at
https://kalspriggs.com/
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (346 reviews)
Lynn
After four days of nothing but aggravation, I finally got my big desk into my van. The process was just as much of a pain as expected, or rather moreso.
Sign of age: When I first got this desk, in my mid-20s, I bear-hugged it and carried it around, including up stairs. Today I put it on a furniture dolly, dragged it up the hill, and needed to take a break ⅔ up. (In fairness to myself, part of the trouble was the less than ideal rolling surface, uneven turf, and another part was that I was wearing my old sneakers with almost no tread, so I couldn’t use my legs to move the desk. I had to take a step backward and then “curl” the dolly toward myself. But still.)
I wasn’t able to weigh the desk because the scale doesn’t go that high. (And it’s a stinkin digital scale, because my wife threw away the old, boring mechanical one, so I don’t know what the maximum value is; more than 300#, anyway, because that’s me plus a couple of dumbbells.)
Tomorrow, if the water heater installation guys actually make it on time to fix a problem (the water heater worked for a few hours and then stopped; a sensor is missing, failed, or not connected), I’ll manage to get all this crap up to my house, try to find a costume piece (my grey leather trenchcoat) for my daughter, and get it to her so she can dress as a plague doctor in class on Friday.
In the meantime, try to talk to a human being at the gas/electric company who isn’t just reading from a sales script to figure out the payment problem so I can pay the past-due bill. Their web site is worse than useless, as it appears to work but does nothing but waste time.
And try, again, to get PayPal un-f’d-up so I can transfer money into my bank account so I can continue to pay bills.
In other, less annoying, news, the chickens’ Winter quarters are almost set up. New coop, new run. I’m letting the run air out for a few days, on account of birds being delicate as regards esters and other chemical odors, and I need to get more straw and preferably more cardboard, and do some neatening up, but it’s almost ready.
Making healthcare a right enslaves the providers.
Kill, convert, or extract tribute.
Your MBBS will see you now.
I’m so old that I remember when “rights” were things that government couldn’t do to you, not things that you deserved to have other people forced to give you.
That statement is a lie, of course. The entitlement corruption began before I was born.
“Tesla could make Texas site selection for $10B, 9,700-job solar plant in days”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/tesla-could-texas-selection-10b-194443008.html
“Fort Bend County is offering tax breaks and other giveaways as it tries to lure Tesla Inc.’s proposed $10 billion solar cell manufacturing facility to suburban Houston.”
“It’s the latest move by a local government to support an effort to land Project Crystal Sun, a 9,700-job project that Tesla has signaled could be built elsewhere if it doesn’t get the giveaways it seeks.”
This proposed solar panel plant with 10,000 workers will be five miles south of my house.
Making healthcare a right enslaves the providers.
Kill, convert, or extract tribute.
Your MBBS will see you now.
El Sayed and his ilk want us all to be his slaves.
Slaves go to the vet.
I wonder if the panels are made from scratch or use Chineseium.
Only Hitler-Musk-tRump would want to bring manufacturing back to the US.
https://babylonbee.com/news/ilhan-omar-calls-obama-to-see-if-he-still-has-the-number-for-that-birth-certificate-guy
Go to Spooks-r-us and ask for John Brennan
I have two Seagate spinning metal drives, one in my primary desktop and another in my home server.
The last time I tried WD Black, the drive was noisy and ran extremely hot. That went back to Newegg after a couple of days of testing.
In WD’s defense, I run 2 GB drives, not 12 GB, and I replace the drives when the warranty is up, keeping the old hardware for backup purposes.
My movie stash is on the home server, and the file system on my primary desktop is over 16 years old, copied from drive to drive. Most of the files are related to my teaching assistant gigs, and I rip BluRays on that machine.
I had just ripped “Love at First Bite” when Susan Saint James died yesterday.
@Paul – If you see the Shout! Factory double disc of “Love at First Bite” and “Once Bitten” in a clearance deal, the first flick is worth the cost.
I can live without “Once Bitten”, but the two film disc has “Love at First Bite” with the original music, which is really important … even if it is disco.
Chineseium.
Raw solar panels no longer get made in the US IIRC. The last major effort was the Solar World boondoggle in Oregon, that state’s Solyndra equivalent.
When we lived in Vantucky, my wife’s nurse’s husband was a supervisor at Solar World and bragged about how much money the various government entities shelled out for him to get the job and cover relocation.
These days, I think he shills some kind of system for trucks to monitor the slaves -er- drivers time behind the wheel and location 24/7.
Anyway, a fab line for solar cells isn’t complicated, but the process is extremely toxic. As long as the control component manufacturing and final assembly takes place in the US, making the basic cells is better left to overseas labor.
The writing has been on the wall for NFLX since the Ellisons started bidding for Warner Bros. film and TV show library.
Netflix needs to cut a deal for a “Friends” license overseas where Paramount Plus has limited numbers. The Ellisons need this revenue stream too but the rights will still be expensive.
When we were in Nashville last week, the Paramount Channel had “Harry Potter” flicks every time I passed that spot in the guide.
When we were in Nashville last week, the Paramount Channel had “Harry Potter” flicks every time I passed that spot in the guide.
With the new Harry Potter tv show coming out starting on Christmas Day on HBO, Paramount is probably trying to remind everyone that the original movies are still available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_(TV_series)
“The first season, titled Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and based on the novel of the same name, consists of eight episodes and is scheduled to premiere in the United States on HBO and globally on HBO Max on 25 December 2026. In May 2026, the series was renewed for a second season which will adapt the second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.”
The new phone arrived. The screen seems taller and narrower than the LG. Side by side the phones can’t be much more that a quarter inch difference in width and height. It arrived with 45% charge.
Nice crisp picture on the screen and the phone seems pretty zippy.
NO directions. Not even a scrap of “what these buttons be?”. No charger, just a USB3 to USB3 cable about 15 inches long. Useless. It came with the fancy toothpick to open the SIM tray so that’s nice.
Google seems to have downloaded my contacts and apps. Even a few apps I un-installed years ago. Wi-Fi is working well.
I found where my apps are by accident. There’s no icon with a bunch of dots to get there…. you swipe up on the home screen.
I found and enabled what LG called Knock On. To wake the screen. Nice. Double tap and no fumbling for a button to push.
I un-installed some junk. No interest in Facebook or Ticktok or Linked-in or any of the “social” things.
Zero interest in the left-swipe screen from the Home screen full of “news”. Zero interest in Taylor Swift or WWE or anything KVUE24 in Austin has to say. But I stumbled on the setting to kill that.
My pictures? That Google Photos backed up? On the new phone yet? Not yet. I can toss them on the SD card and transfer that way.
And where is the Mail program? And the SMS program? Oh, and Calendar. Three things I use and I can’t find them.
I retarded and set a lock pin. PITA. And if I leave my phone at the grocery store it’s a brick. I’m looking for a way to get rid of it.
I’m going to play some more tomorrow. I have the phone on charge…. yeah, it’s a Kindle charger but that’s what I have.
The phone itself is nice. Feels good. The OS is sort of like going from early Win95 to Win7.
But right now, I’m going to play. I haven’t installed my SIM card. Maybe that will make my missing apps show up. I hope.
Anyway. More play. Install the SIM card to see what kind of cell service I get. Then remove card and hard re-set. It’s suppose to be a brand new from the factory phone but the factory seals on the box were cut. Neatly, with a razor blade.
Sure, by the seller to make sure the phone powered on is reasonable. But the Big River “held by Customs” thing… sketchy.
Time for Buddy’s bed time walk.
My tiny bit of Ducking for a mail program on new phone is just silly.
I want a dumb and simple IMAP program like a Kindle has…. I don’t want to install 800 GB of Thunderbird.
Ok, not 800GB but something simple like about 5mb. Just to do IMAP.
K9 Mail on Android does IMAP in a small package.
If K9 Mail is not in the Android store, install the F-Droid client app.
@lynn, there are plenty of storage containers in the local auctions. One of the ISDs has several this week.
https://www.onlinepros.com/auctions/detail/bw172000
———
Did my morning at school. Got stuff to the point I think we can have everything at rehearsal tomorrow.
Then I did my pickups. Fort Bend ISD, Manvil, Pasadena, north Houston. Then to the shop to unload. Finally got home and made some dinner for me. It’ll be another night sans tiny little fire, so I can be fresh tomorrow. I’m working with the kids in the morning, doing a quick pickup, then rehearsal in the afternoon. It’s hard to set sound levels if you aren’t there to hear them. And they kids are still getting side tracked by things not working or that they THINK aren’t working.
Hopefully we won’t be chasing any functionality issues, only style and substance.
———–
Ah, the family is home. Time to at least glance at the kids before they disappear into their rooms…
n
I’m headed for bed.
Pasta alfredo.
n
Paul, I second K9 Mail on Android. It’s what I use on my smartypants phone.
Well the power transformer 100 – 230 volt AC to 29 volt DC on my old Barcalounger power recliner has died. Guess who has a replacement for $16?
https://www.amazon.com/Sopito-Recliner-Switching-Supply-Transformer/dp/B01D9W9ZWO?tag=flandrey-20
I don’t know whether to be shocked or just happy someone carries it.
Chinesium.
And, I did not want to to buy the power chair but that is all they have nowadays in my size.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084NX71RT?tag=flandrey-20
I bought two transformers as I have two Barcaloungers.